Literary Titan Review

Appetizers with Judith feels like spending an afternoon in Judith Briles’s kitchen while she gets ready for friends to arrive. The book is built around her genuine enthusiasm for gathering people around food, whether that means a holiday spread, a neighborhood potluck, or an assortment of appetizers that becomes dinner. Briles describes herself as a hands-on cook who likes to open the refrigerator or pantry, see what appeals to her, and play with ingredients from there. That spirit runs through the whole book. She wants food to taste good, look inviting, and encourage conversation, and she prefers ingredients that are familiar and reasonably easy to find.

 

There’s an impressive amount of variety here. The recipes move through beef, chicken, eggs, fruit, seafood, vegetables, charcuterie-style offerings, crostini, bruschetta, puff pastry bites, dips, sauces, and plenty of cheese. You can go from Easy Peasy Grape Meatballs to French Onion Baked Brie, Chicken Salad Sliders, stuffed dates, crab cakes, Shrimp Scampi Toasties, Sweet Potato Crostini, or Yellow Zucchini Soup Sippers without the collection feeling locked into one kind of party food. Briles is especially good at showing how one idea can branch into several possibilities. A cheese can change, a topping can be swapped, a homemade component can become a shortcut, or a recipe can shift from appetizer to lunch or light meal. That flexibility makes the book useful for cooks who like recipes but don’t want to feel boxed in by them.

 

 The strongest personality in the book comes from Briles herself. She tells stories about friends, neighborhood gatherings, travel, ingredients she loves, things she keeps in her freezer, and the foods that disappear first when she puts them out. Her language is playful and unmistakably hers, with plenty of “easy peasy,” “a kiss” of this or that, and enthusiastic commentary about what makes her taste buds happy. Recipes also include practical details such as make-ahead advice, serving temperatures, substitutions, shopping shortcuts, portion estimates, and reminders about allergies. The later sections on cheese and kitchen essentials extend that same practical approach, giving readers a sense of how Briles stocks and organizes a kitchen for the kind of spontaneous cooking and entertaining the recipes encourage.

—Lydia